The best Loop alternative for Mac (radial menu vs. visible grid)
Loop is one of the prettiest things in Mac window management: hold a trigger key, flick the cursor toward a direction, and the front window snaps there. It's free, open source under GPL-3.0, and has picked up more than 11,000 GitHub stars — deservedly. So if you're hunting for a Loop alternative, it's rarely because Loop is bad software. It's because the radial menu is a cursor interaction, and at some point you noticed your hand kept leaving the keyboard. This guide covers the honest reasons people switch away from Loop, what to switch to, and where each option actually fits.
Why look for a Loop alternative
Loop's model is a radial flick: summon the wheel at your pointer, aim, release. That's genuinely great for discovery — you can see every position without memorizing anything. The friction shows up in a few predictable places.
- It wants your cursor. The radial menu appears at the pointer and you steer it by moving the pointer. If you're building a keyboard-first workflow, that's a mode switch every single time you place a window. Loop does ship keyboard shortcuts and custom keybinds alongside the wheel — but once you're using those, you're back to memorizing a chord per layout, which is the thing the wheel was supposed to fix.
- The trigger key costs you something. Loop's default trigger is Caps Lock, and getting macOS to hand Caps Lock to an app generally means remapping it to Control in System Settings → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts → Modifier Keys. That's a setup step before anything works, and it spends a key some people already have plans for.
- You aim at directions, not regions. The wheel is organized around compass points — halves, quarters, thirds, center, full screen. That covers most laptop work. On a 34" ultrawide, "left" and "third" stop being enough, and pointing at a wheel is a clumsy way to describe "columns two through four."
- There are a lot of dials. Cycles, custom keybinds, stash, theming, preview styling, AppleScript and URL-scheme control. All good features; also a settings screen you can lose twenty minutes in.
If none of that bothers you, keep Loop. It's free and actively maintained, and free-and-good is hard to beat. But if one of those rang true, here's the landscape.
The best Loop alternatives at a glance
| Loop | Rectangle | Magnet | Moom | Let's Tile | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free (Pro ~$9.99) | ~$8 one-time (App Store) | ~$10 one-time | Free tier + $9.99 Pro |
| License | Open source (GPL-3.0) | Open source (MIT) | Proprietary | Proprietary | Proprietary; free tier forever |
| How you choose a layout | Flick a radial menu at the cursor | Memorize a shortcut | Memorize a shortcut | Shortcuts + drag grid | Summon a visible grid, steer with arrows |
| Hands stay on keyboard | Partly (wheel is cursor-driven) | Yes | Yes | Partly | Yes |
| Thirds | Yes | Yes (some Pro) | Yes | Yes | Free, no time limit |
| Arbitrary grid regions | Compass directions + custom frames | Some (Pro) | No | Saved layouts, grids | Yes — full grid in Pro |
| Minimum macOS | 13 (Ventura) | 13 (Ventura) | 13 (Ventura) | Varies | 14 (Sonoma) |
| Devices per license | n/a | Pro: a few Macs | Tied to Apple ID | A few Macs | Up to 20 per key |
Let's Tile — the visible-menu idea, without the cursor
If what you liked about Loop was seeing your options, and what wore you down was reaching for the trackpad to pick one, Let's Tile is the direct trade.
Press one shortcut (⌘↵ by default) and a grid drops over the window you're already using. You steer the highlight with the arrow keys, press ⇧ + an arrow to stretch the window across more cells, and hit ↵ to snap it. Same core virtue as the radial menu — nothing to memorize, because the options are on screen — with your hands never leaving home row. One shortcut covers every layout on the grid instead of one shortcut per layout.
Being fair about the trade: Let's Tile is newer than Loop and it's not open source. If either matters to you on principle, Loop stays the better fit and you should keep it. What Let's Tile offers in exchange is a keyboard-only path and friendly licensing. The free tier is a 3 × 2 grid — halves, thirds, two-thirds, quarters and full screen — permanently, not as a trial, which is every layout most people ever need. Pro is $9.99, paid once: any grid shape you like (4 × 3, 6 × 2, whatever your ultrawide wants), a different grid per display remembered automatically, ⌘⇧ + arrows to throw a window to another display mid-tile, ⌥ + arrows to reshape the grid on the fly, and pixel margins between cells. No account, no subscription, no telemetry, and one key covers up to 20 devices.
That last part is where the ultrawide gap closes: a grid you define beats a wheel of compass points when the screen is wide enough that "left half" is still too big.
The other alternatives, briefly
Rectangle is the obvious like-for-like if you want to stay free and open source. It's MIT-licensed, rock solid, and purely keyboard-driven — no wheel, no cursor. The catch is the one Loop was designed around: you memorize a shortcut per region, and most people never get past halves and quarters. See our Rectangle alternative guide if you go that way and it doesn't stick.
Magnet is the App Store answer: one-time purchase, almost nothing to configure, halves/quarters/thirds with sensible defaults. Its restraint is the point, and also its ceiling — the license is tied to your Apple ID, and custom regions aren't on the menu. More in our Magnet alternative post.
Moom goes the other direction entirely. If your real problem is "put these five windows back exactly where they were when I plug the monitor in," Moom's saved layouts are its standout feature — see saving window layouts on a Mac.
yabai or AeroSpace if you actually want automatic tiling, where windows arrange themselves and you never place anything by hand. That's a different philosophy and a real config commitment; we compared them in yabai vs AeroSpace.
Which should you pick?
Stay on Loop if free-and-open-source is non-negotiable and the cursor doesn't bother you. Pick Rectangle if you want the same price with a pure-keyboard model. Buy Magnet if you want to install one thing and never think about it. Choose Moom for restorable layouts, and yabai/AeroSpace if you want windows to tile themselves.
And if the thing that finally got old was the trackpad round-trip on every window, try Let's Tile — the visible grid keeps the "nothing to memorize" part of Loop and drops the pointer. The free tier has no clock on it, so a couple of days will tell you. If you're pairing it with a keyboard switcher so you never touch the Dock either, Let's Switch is the other half of that setup.
One practical note whichever way you go: don't run two window managers at once. Their shortcuts and triggers will fight, and you'll blame the wrong app. Quit and remove the old one first. For the wider category, see our best macOS window manager guide or the free window manager roundup.
Frequently asked questions
Is Loop free?
Yes. Loop is free and open source under GPL-3.0, installable from GitHub Releases or via Homebrew, and it requires macOS 13 Ventura or later. There's no paid tier.
Can you use Loop without the radial menu?
Yes — Loop supports keyboard shortcuts and custom keybinds for its window actions, and the radial menu can be disabled. Worth knowing before you switch: the trade is that you're back to remembering a chord per layout.
What's the best keyboard-only alternative to Loop?
Rectangle if you want free and open source, or Let's Tile if you'd rather see a grid than memorize chords. Both keep your hands on the keyboard; the difference is whether the layout lives in your memory or on the screen.
Do I need to remap Caps Lock to use a window manager?
Only if the app asks for it. Loop's default trigger is Caps Lock, which typically means remapping it to Control in System Settings first. Rectangle, Magnet and Let's Tile use ordinary modifier chords and leave Caps Lock alone.